The Isle St. MargueriteOne of two rocky, pine-clad islets near the shore at Cannes, and has an ancient history. Francis I began his captivity here after the Battle of Pavia. Marshal Bazaine was also imprisoned here. It was at one time the prison where the mysterious “Man with the Iron Mask” was confined.
The Isle St. MargueriteOne of two rocky, pine-clad islets near the shore at Cannes, and has an ancient history. Francis I began his captivity here after the Battle of Pavia. Marshal Bazaine was also imprisoned here. It was at one time the prison where the mysterious “Man with the Iron Mask” was confined.
The Isle St. Marguerite
One of two rocky, pine-clad islets near the shore at Cannes, and has an ancient history. Francis I began his captivity here after the Battle of Pavia. Marshal Bazaine was also imprisoned here. It was at one time the prison where the mysterious “Man with the Iron Mask” was confined.
Three famous prisons in their way were Pignerol, Exiles and the island fortress of St. Marguerite. Pignerol was a fortified frontier town of Piedmont, which was for some time French property, half bought and half stolen from Italy. It stands on the lower slopes of the southern Alps, twenty miles from Turin, fifty from Nice and ninety east of Grenoble. It was a stronghold of the princes of Savoy, capable of effective defence, with a small red-roofed tower and many tall campaniles gathering round an inner citadel, raised on a commanding height. This central keep is a mass of rambling buildings with solid buttressed walls, essentially a place of arms. Pignerol has three principal gateways. One served for the road coming from the westward and was called the gate of France; another from the eastward, was that of Turin; and the third was a “safety” or “secret” gate, avoiding the town and giving upon the citadel. This last gate was opened rarely and only to admit a prisoner brought privately by special escort. It was a French garrison town inhabited largely by Italians. There was a French governor in supreme command, also a king’s lieutenant who was commandant of the citadel, and the head gaoler, who held the prison proper; and these three officials constituted a sovereign council of war.
Exiles was an unimportant stronghold, a fort shaped like a five pointed star, surrounding a small château with two tall towers which served as prisons. St. Marguerite is one of the Iles de Lerins, a couple of rocky pine clad islets facing the now prosperous southern resort of Cannes and only fifteen hundred yards from the shore. The two islands called respectively St. Honorat and St. Marguerite have each an ancient history. The first was named after a holy man who early in the fifth century established a monastery of great renown, while upon the neighboring island he struck a wellwhich yielded a miraculous flow of sweet water. Francis I of France began his captivity here after his crushing defeat at the battle of Pavia. The royal fort at the eastern end of St. Marguerite was for some time the abode of the so-called “Man with the Iron Mask,” and many scenes of the apocryphal stories of that exploded mystery are laid here.
The island fortress became to some extent famous in our own day by being chosen as the place of confinement for Marshal Bazaine, after his conviction by court martial for the alleged treacherous surrender of Metz to the Germans. As we know, he did not remain long a prisoner, his escape having been compassed by an American friend.
Vincennes and the Bastile—Vincennes described—Castle and woods—Torture—Methods and implements—Amende Honorable—Flagellation and mutilations—Notable inmates—Prince de Condé—Origin of the Bastile—Earliest records—Hugues d’Aubriot—Last English garrison—Sir John Falstaff—Frequented by Louis XI and Anne of Beaujeau—Charles VIII—Francis I—Persecution of the Huguenots—Henry II, Diane de Poitiers, and Catherine de Medicis—Her murderous oppressions—Bastile her favorite prison.
We come now to the two great metropolitan prisons that played so large a part in the vexed and stormy annals of France. Vincennes and Bastile may be said to epitomise Parisian history. They were ever closely associated with startling episodes and notable personages, the best and worst Frenchmen in all ages, and were incessantly the centres of rebellions, dissensions, contentions and strife. They were both State prisons, differing but little in character and quality. Vincennes was essentially a place of durance for people of rank and consequence. The Bastile took the nobility also, but with them the whole crowd of ordinary criminals great and small. These prisons were the two weaponsforged by autocratic authority and freely used by it alike for the oppression of the weak and down trodden, and the openly turbulent but vainly recalcitrant. The royal relatives that dared oppose the king, the stalwart nobles that conspired or raised the standard of revolt, the great soldiers who dabbled in civil war, found themselves committed to Vincennes. The same classes of offenders, but generally of lesser degree, were thrown into the Bastile. The courtier who forgot his manners or dared to be independent in thought or action, the bitter poetaster and too fluent penman of scurrilous pamphlets, were certain of a lodging at the gloomy citadel of Saint Antoine.
The castle of Vincennes was used primarily as a royal palace and has been called the Windsor of the House of Valois. Philip IV, the first king of that family, kept high festival there in a splendid and luxurious court. The great edifice was of noble dimensions—both a pleasure house and a prison, with towers and drawbridges for defense and suites of stately apartments. It stood in the centre of a magnificent forest, the famous Bois de Vincennes, the name often used to describe the residence; and the crowned heads and royal guests who constantly visited the French sovereigns hunted the deer in the woods around, or diverted themselves with tilts or tournaments in the courtyard of the castle. The first to use Vincennes largely as a prison was that famous gaoler LouisXI. He did not live there much, preferring as a residence his impregnable fortified palace at Plessis-lez-Tours. Not satisfied with Loches, he utilised Vincennes and kept it constantly filled. Some account of his principal victims will be found in the narrative of succeeding reigns and the extensive use of the various prisons made by succeeding kings.
The prison fortress of Vincennes in its palmiest days consisted of nine great towers; and a tenth, loftier and more solid, was the Donjon, or central keep, commonly called the Royal Domain. Two drawbridges must be passed before entrance was gained by a steep ascent. This was barred by three heavy doors. The last of these communicated directly with the Donjon, being so ponderous that it could only be moved by the combined efforts of the warder within and the sergeant of the guard without. A steep staircase led to the cells above. The four towers had each four stories and each story a hall forty feet long, with a cell at each corner having three doors apiece. These doors acted one on the other. The second barred the first and the third barred the second, and none could be opened without knowledge of secret machinery.
The torture chamber, with all its abominable paraphernalia of “boots,” rack, “stools” and other implements for inflicting torture, was on the first floor. Every French prison of the olden times had its “question” chamber to carry out the penaltiesand savage processes of the French judicial code. The barbarous treatment administered in it was not peculiar to France alone, but was practised in prisons throughout the so-called civilised world. Torture was in general use in French prisons till a late date and really survived till abolished by the ill-fated Louis XVI in 1780. It may be traced back to the ancient judicial ordeals when an accused was allowed to prove his innocence by withstanding combat or personal attack. It was also known as the “question” because the judge stood by during its infliction and called upon the prisoner to answer the interrogations put to him, when his replies, if any, were written down. The process is described by La Bruyère as a marvellous but futile invention “quite likely to force the physically weak to confess crimes they never committed and yet quite as certain to favor the escape of the really guilty, strong enough to support the application.” The “question” was of two distinct categories: one, the “preparatory” or “ordinary,” an unfair means of obtaining avowals for the still legally innocent; the other, “preliminary” or “extraordinary,” reserved for those actually condemned to death but believed to know more than had yet been elicited. There were many terrible varieties of torture exhibiting unlimited cruel invention. We are familiar enough with the “rack,” the “wheel,” the “thumb screw” and the “boot.” Other less known forms were the “veglia” introduced into France by thepopes when the Holy See came to Avignon. The “veglia” consisted of a small wooden stool so constructed that when the accused sat upon it his whole weight rested on the extremity of his spine. His sufferings soon became acute. He groaned, he shrieked and then fainted, whereupon the punishment ceased until he came to and was again placed on the stool. It was usual to hold a looking glass before his eyes that his distorted features might frighten him into confession. The “estrapade,” like the “veglia,” was borrowed from Italy. By this the torture was applied with a rope and pulley by which the patient was suspended over a slow fire and slowly roasted, being alternately lifted and let down so as to prolong his sufferings. Elsewhere in France fire was applied to the soles of the feet or a blade was introduced between the nail and the flesh of finger or toe. Sometimes sulphur matches or tow was inserted between the fingers and ignited.
In the chief French prisons the “question” was generally limited to the two best known tortures: swallowing great quantities of water and the insertion of the legs within a casing or “boot” of wood or iron. For the first, the accused was chained to the floor and filled with water poured down his throat by means of a funnel. In the “ordinary question” four “cans”—pints, presumably—of water were administered, and for the “extraordinary” eight cans. From a report of the proceedings in the case of a priest accused of sacrilege, who had been already sentenced to death but whose punishment was accentuated by torture, it is possible to realise the sufferings endured. After the first can the victim cried “May God have mercy on me;” at the second he declared, “I know nothing and I am ready to die;” at the third he was silent, but at the fourth he declared he could support it no longer and that if they would release him he would tell the truth. Then he changed his mind and refused to speak, declaring that he had told all he knew and was forthwith subjected to the “extraordinary question.” At the fifth can he called upon God twice. At the sixth he said, “I am dying, I can hold out no longer, I have told all.” At the seventh he said nothing. At the eighth he screamed out that he was dying and lapsed into complete silence. Now the surgeon interfered, saying that further treatment would endanger his life, and he was unbound and placed on a mattress near the fire. He appears to have made no revelations and was in due course borne off to the place of execution.
The torture of the “boot” was applied by inserting the legs in an iron apparatus which fitted closely but was gradually tightened by the introduction of wedges driven home within the fastenings. The pain was intense and became intolerable as the wedge was driven farther and farther down between the knee and the iron casing by repeatedblows of the mallet. The “boot” was better known in France as thebrodequinorbuskin. In England some modification of it was introduced by one Skeffington, a keeper in the Tower, and this gave it the nickname of “Skeffington’s gyves” which was corrupted into the words “scavenger’s daughters.”
It was sometimes shown that the torture had been applied to perfectly innocent people. The operation was performed with a certain amount of care. One of the master surgeons of the prison was always present to watch the effect upon the patient and to offer him advice. The “questioner” was a sworn official who was paid a regular salary, about one hundred francs a year.
Of the secondary punishments, those less than death, there was theamende honorable, a public reparation made by degrading exposure with a rope round the neck, sometimes by standing at the door of a church, sometimes by being led through the streets seated on a donkey with face towards the tail. The culprit was often stripped naked to the waist and flogged on the back as he stood or was borne away. Blasphemy, sacrilege and heresy were punished by the exaction of theamende honorable. An old King of France was subjected to it by his revolted sons. A reigning prince, the Count of Toulouse, who was implicated in the assassination of a papal legate concerned in judging thereligieuses, was brought with every mark ofignominy before an assemblage at the door of a church. Three archers, who had violated a church sanctuary and dragged forth two fugitive thieves, were sentenced on the demand of the clergy to make theamendeat the church door arrayed in petticoats and bearing candles in their hands.
Flagellation was a cruel and humiliating punishment, largely used under degrading conditions and with various kinds of instruments. Mutilation was employed in every variety; not a single part of the body has escaped some penalties. There were many forms of wounding the eyes and the mouth; tongue, ears, teeth, arms, hands and feet have been attacked with fire and weapons of every kind. To slice off the nose, crop the ears, amputate the wrist, draw the teeth, cut off the lower limbs, were acts constantly decreed. Branding with red hot irons on the brow, cheeks, lips and shoulders, kept the executioner busy with such offenses as blasphemy, petty thefts and even duelling. The effects served to inhibit like offenses, but the punishment was in no sense a preventive or corrective.
Prisoners were generally received at Vincennes in the dead of night, a natural sequel to secret unexplained arrests, too often the result of jealousy or caprice or savage ill-will. The ceremony on arrival was much the same as that which still obtains. A close search from head to foot, the deprivation of all papers, cash and valuables, executed under the eyes of the governor himself. The newarrival was then conducted to his lodging, generally a foul den barely furnished with bedstead, wooden table and a couple of rush-bottomed chairs. The first mandate issued was that strict silence was the invariable rule. Arbitrary and irksome rules governed the whole course of procedure and daily conduct. The smallest privileges depended entirely upon the order of superior authority. Books or writing materials were issued or forbidden as the gaoler, the king’s minister, or the king himself might decide. Dietary was fixed by regulation and each prisoner’s maintenance paid out of the king’s bounty on a regular scale according to the rank and quality of the captive. The allowance for princes of the blood was $10 per diem, for marshals of France $7.50, for judges, priests and captains in the army or officials of good standing about $2, and for lesser persons fifty cents. These amounts were ample, but pilfering and peculation were the general rule. The money was diverted from the use intended, articles were issued in kind and food and fuel were shamelessly stolen. Prisoners who were not allowed to supply themselves, were often half starved and half frozen in their cells. So inferior was the quality of the prison rations, that those who purloined food could not sell it in the neighborhood and the peasants said that all that came from the Donjon was rotten. In sharp contrast was the revelry and rioting in which prisoners of high station were permitted to indulge.These were attended by their own servants and constantly visited by their personal friends of both sexes. An amusing sidelight on the régime of Vincennes may be read in the account of the arrest of the great Prince de Condé, during the Fronde, and his two confederate princes, the Prince de Conti, his brother, and the Duc de Longueville, his brother-in-law. No preparations had been made for their reception, but Condé, a soldier and an old campaigner, supped on some new-laid eggs and slept on a bundle of straw. Next morning he played tennis and shuttle-cock with the turnkeys, sang songs and began seriously to learn music. A strip of garden ground, part of the great court, surrounding the prison, where the prisoners exercised, was given to Condé to cultivate and he raised pinks which were the admiration of all Paris. He poked fun at the Governor and when the latter threatened him for breach of rule, proposed to strangle him. This is clearly the same Condé who nicknamed Cardinal Mazarin, “Mars,” when his eminence aspired to lead an army, and when he wrote him a letter addressed it to “His Excellency, the Great Scoundrel.”
Prison discipline must have been slack in Vincennes, nor could innumerable locks and ponderous chains make up for the careless guard kept by its gaolers. Many escapes were effected from Vincennes, more creditable to the ingenuity and determination of the fugitives than to the vigilance andintegrity of those charged with their safe custody.
Antiquarian researches connect the Bastile in its beginning with the fortifications hastily thrown up by the Parisians in the middle of the fourteenth century to defend the outskirts of the city upon the right bank of the river. The walls built by Philip Augustus one hundred and fifty years earlier were by this time in a ruinous condition. The English invasion had prospered, and after the battle of Poitiers the chief authority in the capital, Étienne Marcel, the provost of the merchants, felt bound to protect Paris. An important work was added at the eastern entrance of the city, and the gateway was flanked by a tower on either side. Marcel was in secret correspondence with the then King of Navarre, who aspired to the throne of France, and would have admitted him to Paris through this gateway, but was not permitted to open it. The infuriated populace attacked him as he stood with the keys in his hand, and although he sought asylum in one of the towers he was struck down with an axe and slain.
This first fortified gate was known as the Bastile of St. Antoine. The first use of the word “Bastile,” which is said to have been of Roman origin, was applied to the temporary forts raised to cover siege works and isolate and cut off a beleaguered city from relief or revictualment. The construction of a second and third fortress wasundertaken some years later, in 1370, when the first stone of the real Bastile was laid. Another provost, Hugues Aubriot by name, had authority from Charles V to rebuild and strengthen the defences, and was supplied by the king with moneys for the purpose. Aubriot appears to have added two towers to the gateway, and this made the Bastile into a square fort with a tower at each angle. This provost was high-handed and ruled Paris with a rod of iron, making many enemies, who turned on him. He offended the ever turbulent students of the University and was heavily fined for interfering with their rights. To raise money for the king, he imposed fresh taxes, and was accused of unlawful commerce with the Jews, for which he was handed over to the ecclesiastical tribunal and condemned to be burnt to death. This sentence was, however, commuted to perpetual imprisonment, and tradition has it that he was confined in one of the towers he had himself erected. The historian compares his sad fate with that of other designers of punishment, such as the Greek who invented the brazen bull and was the first to be burnt inside it, or Enguerrand de Marigny, who was hung on his own gibbet of Montfauçon, and the Bishop Haraucourt of Verdun, who was confined in his own iron cage.
Hugues Aubriot was presently transferred from the Bastile to For-l’Évêque prison where he was languishing at the time of the insurrection of theMaillotins. These men rose against the imposition of fresh taxes and armed themselves with leaden mallets which they seized in the arsenal. A leader failing them, they forcibly released Hugues Aubriot and begged him to be their captain, escorting him in triumph to his house. But the ex-provost pined for peace and quiet and slipped away at the first chance. He was a native of Dijon in Burgundy and he escaped thither to die in obscurity the following year.
Charles VI enlarged and extended the Bastile by adding four more towers and giving it the plan of a parallelogram, and it remained with but few modifications practically the same when captured by the revolutionists in 1789. The fortress now consisted of eight towers, each a hundred feet high and with a wall connecting them, nine feet thick. Four of these towers looked inwards facing the city, four outwards over the suburb of St. Antoine. A great ditch, twenty-five feet deep and one hundred and twenty feet wide, was dug to surround it. The road which had hitherto passed through it was diverted, the gateway blocked up and a new passage constructed to the left of the fortress. The Bastile proper ceased to be one of the entrances of Paris and that of the Porte St. Antoine was substituted. Admission to the fortress was gained at the end opposite the rue St. Antoine between the two towers named the Bazinière and Comté overlooking the Seine. On the ground floor of theformer was the reception ward, as we should call it, a detailed account of which is preserved in the old archives. The first room was the porter’s lodge with a guard bed and other pieces of furniture of significant purpose; two ponderous iron bars fixed in the wall, with iron chains affixed ending in fetters for hands and feet, and an iron collar for the neck; the avowed object of all being to put a man in “Gehenna,” the ancient prison euphemism for hell. A four-wheeled iron chariot is also mentioned, no doubt for the red hot coals to be used in inflicting torture, the other implements for which were kept in this chamber. The tower of the Comté was like the rest, of four stories, and became chiefly interesting for the escapes effected from it by Latude and D’Allègre in later years.
All the towers of the Bastile received distinctive names derived from the chance associations of some well-known personage or from the purpose to which they were applied. These names became the official designation of their occupants, who were entered in the books as “No. so and so” of “such and such a tower.” Personal identity was soon lost in the Bastile. If we made the circuit of the walls, starting from the Bazinière Tower first described, we should come to that of La Bertaudière in the façade above the rue St. Antoine and overlooking the city, the third floor of which was the last resting place of that mysterious prisoner, the Man with the Iron Mask. Next came the tower of Liberty,a name supposed by some to have originated in some saturnine jest, by others to have been the scene of successful escape, although attempts were usually made on the other side of the Bastile which overlooked the open country. The tower of the Well (Du Puits) had an obvious derivation.
At the north-east angle was the Corner Tower, so called, no doubt, because it was situated at the corner of the street and the Boulevard St. Antoine. Next came the Chapel Tower, from its neighborhood to the old Chapel of the Bastile. This at one time took rank as the noble quarter of the fortress and was called the “Donjon”—for in the time of the English domination the king’s chamber and that of the “captain” were situated in this tower. In later days the Chapel Tower had accommodation for only three occupants, two on the second and one on the third floor, the first floor being used as a store house. Next came the Treasure Tower, a title which referred back to a very early date, as witness receipts in existence for moneys paid over to the king’s controller-general of finances. In the reign of Henry IV, a prudent monarch with a thrifty minister, the ever faithful and famous Duke de Sully, large sums were deposited in this tower as a reserve for the enterprises he contemplated. The money was soon expended after Henry’s assassination, in wasteful extravagances and civil wars. It is of record that after payment of all current expenses of State, the surplus collected by Sullyin the Bastile amounted to 41,345,000 livres or upwards of 120,000,000 francs, or $25,000,000. On reaching the eighth, or last tower, that of the Comté, we return to the northernmost side of the great gate already spoken of.
Speaking generally, all these towers were of four stories, with an underground basement each containing a number of dens and dungeons of the most gloomy and horrible character. The stone walls were constantly dripping water upon the slimy floor which swarmed with vermin, rats, toads and newts. Scanty light entered through narrow slits in the wall on the side of the ditch, and a small allowance of air, always foul with unwholesome exhalations. Iron bedsteads with a thin layer of dirty straw were the sole resting places of the miserable inmates. The fourth or topmost floors were even more dark than the basement. These, the Calottes, or “skull caps,” (familiar to us as the head-dress of the tonsured priests) were cagelike in form with low, vaulted roofs, so that no one might stand upright within save in the very centre of the room. They were barely lighted by narrow windows that gave no prospect, from the thickness of the walls and the plentiful provision of iron gratings having bars as thick as a man’s arms.
The fortress stood isolated in the centre of its own deep ditch, which was encircled by a narrow gallery serving as achemin-des-rondes, the sentinel’s and watchman’s beat. This was reached bynarrow staircases from the lower level of the interior and there were sentry boxes at intervals for the guards. North of the Bastile, beyond the main prison structure, but included in the general line of fortifications, was the Bastion, used as a terrace and exercising ground for privileged prisoners. In later years permission was accorded to the governors to grow vegetables upon this open space and fruit gardens were in full bearing upon the final demolition of the Bastile. The privilege conceded to the governor in this garden became a grievance of the prisoners, for it was let to a contractor who claimed that when the prisoners frequented it for exercise damage was done to the growing produce, and by a royal decree all prisoners were forbidden henceforth to enter this space.
The Bastile was for the first two centuries of its history essentially a military stronghold serving, principally, as a defensive work, and of great value to its possessors for the time being. Whoever held the Bastile over-awed Paris and was in a sense the master of France. In the unceasing strife of parties it passed perpetually from hand to hand and it would be wearisome to follow the many changes in its ownership. In the long wars between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, the latter seized Paris in the reign of the half-witted Charles V, but the Armagnacs held the Bastile and the person of the king’s eldest son, whose life was eventually saved by this seclusion. This dauphin came afterwards to the throne through the help of the English king, Henry V, who married his daughter Catherine and was appointed Regent of France. Under this régime Paris was occupied for a time by an English garrison. When at length the rival factions in France made common cause against the intrusive strangers the French re-entered Paris and the English were forced to retire into the Bastile, where they were so closely besieged that they presently offered to capitulate. The fortress was greatly over-crowded, supplies ran short and there was no hope of relief. The Constable of France, Richemont, was master of the situation outside, and at first refused terms, hoping to extort a large ransom, but the people of Paris, eager to be rid of the foreigners, advised him to accept their surrender and to allow the English garrison to march out with colors flying. It was feared that the people of Paris would massacre them as they passed through the streets and they were led by a circuitous route to the river where, amidst the hoots and hisses of a large crowd, they embarked in boats and dropped down the river to Rouen.
It is interesting to note here that one of the English governors of the Bastile was a certain Sir John Falstaff, not Shakespeare’s Sir John but a very different person, a stalwart knight of unblemished character, great judgment and approved prowess. He was a soldier utterly unlike the drunken, and disreputable “Jack Falstaff,” with his unconquerable weakness for sack, who only fought men in buckram. The real Sir John Falstaff was careful to maintain his charge safely, strengthening the fortress at all points, arming and victualling it and handing it over in good order to his successor, Lord Willoughby d’Eresby. History has to record other good things of Sir John Falstaff, who is remembered as a patron of letters, who paid a price for the translation of Cicero’s “De Senectute,” who endowed Magdalen College, Oxford, with much valuable property and whose name is still commemorated among the founders of the College in the anniversary speech. He was a Knight of the Garter, held many superior commands and died full of honors at the advanced age of eighty. Lord Willoughby was governor at the time of the surrender. He withdrew in safety and evidently in good heart for he won a victory over the French at Amiens after his retreat.
After the exodus of the English and with the accession of Louis XI, the two State prisons of Paris were very fully and constantly occupied. The chief episodes in the checkered history of France, conspiracies, revolts and disturbances, were written in the prison registers and their records are a running commentary upon the principal events of French history. The personal qualities of the rulers, their quarrels with their great subjects, the vindictive policies they followed, their oppression of, and cruelty to the people, may be read in theannals of Vincennes and the Bastile. By taking the reigns seriatim and examining the character of the sovereigns, we shall best realise passing events and those who acted in them.
Let us take up the story with Louis XI to whom some reference has already been made. Some of his victims, the prisoners of Loches and the Comte de Saint Pol have figured on an earlier page. To these we may add the story of the two Armagnacs, Jacques and Charles. Charles, although wholly innocent, was arrested and imprisoned because his brother Jacques had revolted against the king. Charles d’Armagnac was first tortured horribly, then thrown into one of the cages of the Bastile, which he inhabited for fourteen years and when released was found to be bereft of reason. Jacques, better known as the Duc de Nemours, had been the boy friend and companion of Louis, who lavished many favors on him which he repaid by conspiring against the royal authority. When orders were issued for his arrest he withdrew to his own castle, Carlet, hitherto deemed impregnable. It succumbed, however, when besieged in due form, and the Duke was taken prisoner. He had given himself up on a promise that his life would be spared, but he received no mercy from his offended king. His first prison was Pierre-Encise, in which his hair turned grey in a few nights. Thence he was transferred to a cage in the Bastile. The minute instructions were issued by the King as tothis prisoner’s treatment, and in a letter it was directed that he should never be permitted to leave his cage or to have his fetters removed or to go to mass. He was only to be taken out to be tortured, in the cruel desire to extort an avowal that he had intended to kill the King and set up the Dauphin in his place. The Duke made a piteous appeal, signing himself “Pauvre Jacques,” but he was sent for trial before the Parliament in a packed court from which the peers were absent. He was condemned to death and executed, according to Voltaire, under the most revolting circumstances. It is fair to add that no other historian reports these atrocities. It is said that the scaffold on which he suffered was so constructed that his children, the youngest of whom was only five, were placed beneath clad in white and were splashed with the blood from his severed head that dropped through the openings of the planks. After this fearful tragedy these infants were carried back to the Bastile and imprisoned there in a narrow cell for five years. Other records, possibly also apocryphal, are preserved of additional torments inflicted on the Armagnac princes. It is asserted that they were taken out of their cells twice weekly to be flogged in the presence of the governor and to have a tooth extracted every three months.
The character of Louis XI shows black and forbidding in history. His tireless duplicity was matched by his distrustfulness and insatiable curiosity. He braved all dangers to penetrate the secrets of others, risked his own life, spent gold, wasted strength, used the matchless cunning of a red Indian, betrayed confidences and lied to all the world. Yet he was gifted with keen insight into human nature. No one knew better than he the strength and weakness of his fellow creatures. Withal, France has had worse rulers. He may be credited with a desire to raise and help the common people. He saw that in their industry and contentment the wealth of the kingdom chiefly lay and looked forward to the day when settled government would be assured. “If I live a little longer,” he told Comines the historian, “there shall be only one weight, one measure, one law for the kingdom. We will have no more lawyers cheating and pilfering, lawsuits shall be shortened, and there shall be good police in the country.” These dreams were never realised; but at least, Louis was not a libertine and the slave of selfish indulgence, the most vicious in a vicious court, ever showing an evil example and encouraging dissolute manners and shameless immorality, as were many of those who came after him.
Although the Salic law shut the female sex out of the succession to the throne, supreme power was frequently wielded by women in France. One of the earliest instances of this was in the steps taken by Louis XI to provide for the government during the minority of his son, who succeeded as CharlesIX. The King’s daughter, Anne de Beaujeu, was named regent by her father, who had a high opinion of her abilities and considered her “the least foolish of her sex he had met; not the wisest, for there are no sensible women.” She was in truth possessed of remarkable talents and great strength of character, having much of her father’s shrewdness and being even less unscrupulous. But she ruled with a high hand and her young brother submitted himself entirely to her influence. She felt it her duty to make an example of the evil counsellors upon whom Louis had so much relied. Oliver le Daim, the ex-barber who had been created Comte de Meulan, was hanged, and his estates confiscated; Doyat, chief spy and informer, was flogged and his tongue pierced with a hot iron; Coictier, the King’s doctor, who had wielded too much authority, was fined heavily and sent into exile. Anne’s brother-in-law, the Duc d’Orleans, afterwards King Louis XII, had expected the regency and rebelled, but she put him down with a strong hand, destroyed the insurgent forces that he gathered around him, and made him a close prisoner in the great tower of Bourges, where he endured the usual penalties,—confinement in a narrow, low-roofed cell by day and removal to the conventional iron cage at night. Better fortune came to him in a few short years, for by the death of the Dauphin, only son of Charles VIII, Louis became next heir to the throne, and ascended it on the sudden death of the Kingfrom an accident in striking his head against the low archway of a dark corridor. He succeeded also to the King’s bed, for in due course he married his widow, Anne of Brittany, another woman of forcible character, on whom he often relied, sometimes too greatly.
The reign of Charles VIII and Louis brought military glory and a great increase of territory to France. The records of generally successful external war rather than internal dissensions fill the history of the time and we look in vain for lengthy accounts of prisoners relegated to the State prisons. With the accession of Francis I another epoch of conflict arrived and was general throughout Europe, involving all the great nations. It was the age of chivalry, when knights carried fortunes on their backs and the most lavish outlay added to the “pomp and circumstance” of war. “The Field of the Cloth of Gold” remains as a landmark in history, when kings vied with each other in extravagant ostentation and proposed to settle their differences by personal combat. The reign was brilliant with achievement abroad, but at home the people suffered much misery and Francis kept his prisons filled. Some great personages fell under his displeasure and were committed to the Bastile; notably, Montmorency, Constable of France, and Chabot, Admiral of France. These two, once school companions of the King, became bitter rivals and the Constable persuaded the King to try theAdmiral on a charge of embezzlement. Francis, jealous of Chabot, readily accepted the accusation, and sent him to the Bastile, where the most flagrant violations of justice were used to secure conviction. He escaped with fines and banishment; and the next year the fickle monarch forgave him and released him from durance. He had been so sorely tried by his imprisonment that no doctor could restore him to health. The Chancellor, Poyet, who had framed the indictment, next found himself in the Bastile, suspected of being in the possession of important State secrets. The King himself appeared as the witness against him and although the charges were vague, he was sentenced to fine and confiscation of property.
Castle St. André, AvignonFortress and prison used by the popes when Avignon was the papal residence, in the fourteenth century. Avignon remained the property of the popes after their return to Rome, until its annexation by the French in 1791.
Castle St. André, AvignonFortress and prison used by the popes when Avignon was the papal residence, in the fourteenth century. Avignon remained the property of the popes after their return to Rome, until its annexation by the French in 1791.
Castle St. André, Avignon
Fortress and prison used by the popes when Avignon was the papal residence, in the fourteenth century. Avignon remained the property of the popes after their return to Rome, until its annexation by the French in 1791.
The persecution of the Huguenots began in the reign of Francis I, who from the first declared himself on the side of the Pope. Protestantism as preached by Martin Luther took another form in France, and the Geneva doctrines of Calvin, which went much further, were followed. Calvin, it may be said here, rejected the Episcopate which Luther had retained. He recognised only two sacraments,—Baptism and the Last Supper, and desired his disciples to imitate the early Christians in the austerity of their morals. The French Protestants were styled Calvinists and more generally Huguenots, a name taken from the German word, “Eidgenossen,” or “confederates.” Calvinism made slow progress in France although it numbered amongstits adherents some of the best heads in the nation, men of letters, savants, great lawyers and members of the highest aristocracy. They were persecuted pitilessly. In 1559 Berquin, a king’s councillor, a man of much learning, was burned alive in Paris and many shared his fate as martyrs to the new faith in the great cities such as Lyons, Toulouse, and Marseilles. The most horrible atrocities were perpetrated against the Vaudois, a simple, loyal population residing in the towns and villages around Avignon and on the borders of the Durance. Two fanatical prelates of the Guise family, the Cardinal de Tournon and the Cardinal de Lorraine, headed the movement in the course of which 3,000 persons were massacred,—men, women and children, and any who escaped were condemned to the galleys for life. Nevertheless the reformed religion gained ground steadily. The new ideas appealed to the people despite opposition. Neither persecution, nor the threats fulminated by the Council of Trent, nor the energies of the new order of Jesuits, could stamp out the new faith; and religious intolerance, backed by the strong arm of the Church was destined to deluge France with bloodshed in the coming centuries.
Henry II, who followed his father Francis on the throne, redoubled the persecution which was stained with incessant and abominable cruelties. The ordinary process of law was set aside in dealing with the Huguenots who were brought under ecclesiastical jurisdiction. An edict published in 1555, enjoined all governors and officers of justice to punish without delay, without examination and without appeal, all heretics condemned by the judges. The civil judge was no longer anything but the passive executant of the sentences of the Church. The Parliament of Paris protested, but the King turned a deaf ear to these remonstrances and summoned a general meeting of all the Parliaments, which he attended in person and where he heard some home truths. One of the most outspoken was a great nobleman, one Anne Du Bourg, who defended the Protestants, declaring that they were condemned to cruel punishment while heinous criminals altogether escaped retribution. Du Bourg and another, Dufaure, were arrested and were conveyed to the Bastile where they were soon joined by other members of the Parliament. After many delays Du Bourg was brought to trial, convicted and sentenced to be burnt to death. “It is the intention of the Court,” so ran the judgment, “that the said Du Bourg shall in no wise feel the fire, and that before it be lighted and he is cast therein he shall be strangled, yet if he should wish to dogmatise and indulge in any remarks he shall be gagged so as to avoid scandal.” He was executed on the Place de la Grève on the top of a high gallows under which a fire was lighted to receive the dead body when it fell.
Henry II had been a weak and self-indulgentking. Ostentatious and extravagant, he wasted large sums in the expenses of his court and lavished rich gifts on his creatures, a course which emptied the treasury and entailed burdensome taxation. He was entirely under the thumb of his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, a cold-blooded, selfish creature, who ruled him and the country with unquestioned supremacy, before whom even the lawful queen, Catherine de Medicis, humiliated herself and paid abject court. The King’s ministers, the Constable Montmorency and the Duc de Guise, were at first rivals in power with Diane, but soon joined with her in riding roughshod over the country, and in bestowing all good things, places, governments and profitable charges on their friends and creatures. Foreign adventure, external wars, famine and pestilence constantly impoverished France. The people rose frequently in insurrection and were always suppressed with sanguinary cruelty. Constable Montmorency, above mentioned, dealt so severely with Bordeaux, that in a short space of time no fewer than four hundred persons were beheaded, burned, torn asunder by wild horses or broken on the wheel.
A prominent figure of those days was Mary Stuart, better known as Mary, Queen of Scots, that fascinating woman who was “a politician at ten years old and at fifteen governed the court.” She was the child-wife of Francis II, who unexpectedly came to the throne on the sudden deathby mischance of Henry II at a tournament held in front of the Bastile. He had challenged Montgomery, an officer of the Scottish Guard, to break a lance with him and in the encounter a splinter entered Henry’s eye and penetrated to the brain.
The tragic death of Francis II was another of those instances in which the Salic Law was evaded and a woman held supreme power. Catherine de Medicis has already appeared on the scene in the sanguinary suppression of the conspiracy of Amboise. This was only one of the atrocities that stained her long tenure of power as Regent of France during the minority of her son Charles IX. Her character has been already indicated. Evil was ever in the ascendant with her and in her stormy career she exhibited the most profound cunning, a rare fertility of resource, and the finished diplomacy of one trained in the Machiavellian school. She was double-faced and deceitful beyond measure. Now the ally of one political party, now of the other, she betrayed both. She even affected sympathy at times with the Protestants and often wept bitter crocodile tears over their sufferings. For a time liberty of conscience was conceded to the Huguenots but Catherine desired always to conciliate the Catholics and concerted measures with Philip of Spain to bring about a new persecution. A fresh conflict ensued in which successes were gained on both sides, but the Huguenots showed so firm a front that peace could not be denied them. Theywere always prepared to rise, offering a hydra-headed resistance that might be scotched but could not be killed. To crush them utterly Catherine planned the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, in which the Admiral Coligny and 10,000 Protestants were murdered in Paris alone and 30,000 more in the provinces. This ineffaceable crime to which Charles IX had weakly consented, seemed to paralyse the Huguenot cause and many of their principal leaders abjured the new faith. Charles IX, tortured by remorse, constantly haunted by superstitious terrors, rapidly succumbed to wasting disease and died penitent, acknowledging his guilt.
Some time previously Henri d’Anjou had been elected King of Poland and on his departure, efforts were made to secure the succession for his younger brother, the Duc d’Alençon, who was to own himself the protector of the Huguenots. The plot failed and served only to fill the prisons of Vincennes and Bastile. Montgomery, the Huguenot leader, was implicated. He had surrendered on a vague promise of safe conduct which ended in his torture to compel confession of complicity in the plot. He was on the point of being secretly strangled when Catherine de Medicis, who had gone to the Bastile to be present at his execution, suddenly changed her mind and set the surprised prisoner free.
Another class was committed to the Bastile by Catherine de Medicis. She waged war constantlyagainst coiners and issuers of false money; their chief ringleader was sent to the Bastile with special instructions for his “treatment.” He was transferred secretly to Paris from Rouen and shut up alone in an especially private place where no news could be had of him. This order was signed by Catherine herself. Next year (1555) a defaulting finance officer was committed and the lieutenant of the Bastile was ordered to forbid him to speak to a soul or write or give any hint where he was. Again, a Gascon gentleman, named Du Mesnil, was taken in the act of robbing and murdering a courier on his way to Italy, the bearer of 30,000 crowns worth of pearls. Du Mesnil’s accomplices, two simple soldiers, were hanged at the Halles but he himself was sent to the Bastile and recommended to its governor for “good discipline.” This prisoner seems to have preferred liberty to the favor shown him, such as it was, for in November, 1583, he made a desperate attempt to escape. The account given by L’Estoile in his memoirs, is that Du Mesnil, weary of his close confinement, burned down the door of his cell, got out, became possessed of a rope from the well in the court, climbed to the top of the terrace (the Bastion), fastened his rope through an artillery wheel and lowered himself into the ditch. The rope had been lengthened by another made from his sheets and bedding, but it was still too short to reach the bottom, and letting himself fall he was caught on a window belowand making outcry was recaptured and re-imprisoned. A more distinguished prisoner was Bernard Palissy, the famous potter who was committed to gaol as a Protestant and died in the Bastile in 1590 when eighty years of age. L’Estoile tells us that Palissy at his death bequeathed him two stones, one of them, part of a petrified skull which he accounted a philosopher’s stone, the other, a stone he had himself manufactured. “I have them still,” says L’Estoile, “carefully preserved in my cabinet for the sake of the good old man whom I loved and relieved in his necessity,—not as much as I could have wished, but to the full extent of my power.”
When Henry III assassinated the Duc de Guise at Blois, Paris took it greatly to heart and swore vengeance. The “Sixteen” held the Bastile, and its governor, Bussy-Leclerc, an ex-fencing master, sought to coerce the Parliament, seizing at once upon all with royalist leanings and driving them into the Bastile. President Auguste de Thou was arrested and with him his wife, who is said to have been the first female occupant of this prison. Now the King, in despair, turned to the Huguenots and formed an alliance with Henry of Navarre. The two kings joined forces to recover Paris and the Parisians, alarmed, feeling they could not make long resistance, accepted the worst. Some said there would be a second St. Bartholomew, for the “Leaguers” and the Royalists boasted that so manyshould be hanged that the wood for gibbets would run short. But the situation suddenly changed, for Henry III was unexpectedly assassinated by a fanatical monk, Clément, in the very heart of the royal apartments.
Early governors of the Bastile—Frequent changes—Day of Barricades—Conspiracy of Biron—Assassination of Henry IV—Ravaillac—Barbarous sentence—Marie de Medicis left Regent—Story of the Concinis—Rise of Richelieu—Gifts and character—His large employment of the State prisons—Duelling prohibited—The Day of Dupes—Triumph over his enemies—Fall of Marie de Medicis—Maréchal Bassompierre—His prolonged imprisonment.
We may pause a moment at this stage to give some attention to a few of the more prominent governors of the Bastile, appointed by each side in turn during the long conflicts of the opposing parties. Antoine d’Ivyer was the first after the English, as captain under the supreme command of Duke Charles of Bourbon. One Cissey, after fifteen years’ tenure in the Bastile, was succeeded by La Rochette, he by De Melun, he by De Chauvigny, and the last by Phillip Luillier, who enjoyed the confidence of Louis XI and was personally in charge of the bishops and dukes who have been mentioned. He was the last of the royal functionaries, the court officials other than military men who acted as gaolers. Only in the troublous times of the League andlater of the Fronde, when the possession of the Bastile meant so much to the existing régime, was the fortress entrusted to the strong hands of soldiers and men of action equal to any emergency. After Luillier the charge was considered equal to a provincial government and those entrusted with it were some of the most considerable persons in the State, constables or ministers who ruled by lieutenant or deputy and kept only the title and dignity of the office. It was long deemed hereditary in certain great families and descended from father to son, as with the Montmorencys. The head of that house, William, in 1504, was succeeded by his son, Anne, a Pluralist, at the same time governor of Paris and captain of the castle of Vincennes. Francis, a marshal of France, son of the last-named, was a third Montmorency governor. Much later the post was held by successive members of the family of Admiral Coligny, and some of the governors were very eminent persons, such as Châteauneuf, the Duc de Luynes, Maréchal Bassompierre and Sully, the celebrated minister of Henry IV, whose memoirs have been widely read and were the inspiration of the English novelist, Stanley Weyman.
The Bastile often changed hands. When Henry of Guise made himself master of Paris after the “Battle,” or “Day of the Barricades,” Laurent Testu was governor or king’s lieutenant of the Bastile; but after the second day’s fighting, when summoned to surrender, he obeyed and opened the gates. The Duc de Guise then gave the governorship to one Bussy-Leclerc, a devoted adherent, but of indifferent character, who had been a procureur of the Parliament and a fencing master. He had a large following of bullies and cut-throats. The prisoners in the Bastile were quite at his mercy and he ruled with a rough, reckless hand, inflicting all manner of cruelties in order to extort money,—squeezing the rich and torturing the poor. After the assassination of Henry of Guise at Blois, he planned reprisals against Henry III and sought to intimidate the Parliament, which would have made submission to the King, by making its members prisoners in the Bastile. Leclerc’s excesses roused Paris against him, and the Duc de Mayenne, now the head of the League, threatened the Bastile. Leclerc, in abject terror, at once surrendered on condition that he might retire from the capital to Brussels with the plunder he had acquired. Dubourg l’Espinasse, a brave, honorable soldier, was appointed to the Bastile by the Duc de Mayenne, in succession to Leclerc and defended it stoutly against Henry of Navarre, now King Henry IV, after the assassination of his predecessor. Dubourg declared that he knew no king of France but the Duc de Mayenne, and on being told that Henry was master of Paris, said, “Good, but I am master of the Bastile!” He at length agreed to yield up the fortress to the Duke, who had entrusted him with the command, andfinally marched out with all the honors of war, gaining great credit from the King for his staunch and loyal conduct to his superiors. The text of the capitulation has been preserved and its quaint phraseology may be transcribed. The commandant promised to hand over to the king, “on Sunday at three in the afternoon the said Bastile, its artillery and munitions of war. In return for which the King will permit the garrison to march out with arms, horses, furniture and all belongings. The troops will issue by one gate with drums beating, matches lighted and balls” (for loading).
It is recorded of Henry IV by the historian Maquet, that he was the king who least abused the Bastile. It is due this sovereign to say that the prisoners confined in it during his reign were duly tried and condemned by Parliament and that from his accession the fortress lost its exceptional character and became an ordinary prison. Sully was appointed governor and received a letter of appointment in which the King announced that he relied more than ever upon his loyalty and had decided to make him captain of the Bastile: “so that if I should have any birds to put in the cage and hold tight I can rely upon your foresight, diligence and loyalty.” Few prisoners were committed to the Bastile in this reign, but all imprisoned were notably traitors. Such was Charles, Maréchal de Biron, the restless and unstable subject who conspired more than once against the King, by whomat one time he had been exceedingly favored. Henry IV was greatly attached to Biron. “I never loved anyone as I loved Biron,” he said. “I could have confided my son and my kingdom to him.” For a time Biron served him well, yet he, too, entered into a dangerous conspiracy with the King of Spain, the Duke of Savoy and the King’s disloyal subjects in France.
Henry IV forgave him and paid his debts, which were large, for he was a great gambler and had lost large sums at the tables. Biron was sent to London as ambassador to the English Queen Elizabeth but resumed his evil courses on his return to France and was summoned before the King to answer for them. Henry promised to pardon and forgive him if he would confess his crimes, but Biron was obstinately silent and was committed to the Bastile. He was tried openly before the Parliament and unanimously convicted by one hundred and twenty-seven judges. The sentence was death and he was to be publicly executed on the Place de la Grève, but Henry, dreading the sympathy of the mob and not indisposed to spare his friend the contumely of a public hanging, allowed the execution to take place within the Bastile. Biron, although he had acknowledged his guilt, died protesting against the sentence. He comported himself with little dignity upon the scaffold, resisting the headman and trying to strangle him. Three times he knelt down at the block and three times sprang to his feet; andthe fourth time was decapitated with much dexterity by the executioner.
The Comte d’Auvergne, the natural son of Charles IX and Marie Touchet, was an ally of Biron’s and put on his trial at the same time. Their common offense had been to invite invasion by the Spaniards and stir up a revolution throughout France. D’Auvergne was sentenced to death and with him the Comte d’Entragues, who had married Marie Touchet, but neither suffered. D’Auvergne remained in the Bastile for twelve years. He was released in the following reign and made a good appearance at court as the Duc d’Angoulême. Henry IV had been moved to soften the rigors of his imprisonment and wrote to the governor (Sully) saying that as he had heard his nephew d’Auvergne needed change of air, he was to be placed in “the pavilion at the end of the garden of the arsenal which looks upon the water, but to be guarded in any way that seemed necessary for the security of his person.”
Reference must be made to one inmate of the Bastile at this period, the Vicomte de Tavannes, who was opposed to Henry IV as a partisan of the League. He was long held a prisoner but was exchanged for the female relations of the Duc de Longueville; and Tavannes has written in his “memoirs:” “A poor gentleman was thus exchanged against four princesses, one a Bourbon, one of the House of Cleves, and two of that ofOrleans.” At the fall of the League, Tavannes acknowledged Henry IV on condition that he should be confirmed in his dignity as a marshal of France. This promise was not kept and he withdrew from his allegiance, saying he was the King’s subject and not his slave. For this he was again committed to the Bastile from which he escaped, according to his own account, with great ease,—“A page brought me some thread and a file; I twisted the cord, filed through a bar and got away.” He was not pursued but was suffered to remain in peace in his own castle of Soilly, near Autun. The King could never tolerate Tavannes. He had been largely concerned in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, of which he is believed to have been the principal instigator and which he is supposed to have suggested to Catherine de Medicis.
Henry’s reign was abruptly terminated by his assassination in 1610. He was murdered by François Ravaillac, a native of Angoulême who was no doubt a victim of religious dementia. Having been much perturbed with visions inciting him to exhort the king to take action against the followers of the pretended reformed religion and convert them to the Roman Catholic Church, Ravaillac determined to do so. On reaching Paris he went to the Jesuits’ house near the Porte St.-Antoine and sought advice from one of the priests, Father Daubigny, who told him to put these disturbed thoughts out of his head, to say his prayers and tell his beads. He still maintained his intention of speaking to the King and addressed to him on one occasion as he drove by in his coach, but “the King put him back with a little stick and would not hear him.” Then Ravaillac changed his mind and set out for home; but on reaching Estampes, was again impelled to return to Paris—this time with homicidal intent. The would-be regicide watched for the King constantly, but thought it better to wait until after the new queen (Marie de Medicis) was crowned. He hung about the Louvre, burning to do the deed, and at last found his opportunity on the 14th of May, 1610, near the churchyard of St. Innocent. The King left the Louvre that morning in his coach unattended. One of his gentlemen had protested. “Take me, Sire, I implore you,” he said, “to guard your Majesty.” “No,” replied the King, “I will have neither you nor the guard. I want no one.” The coach was driven to the Hotel de Longueville and then to the Croix du Tiroir and so to the churchyard of St. Bartholomew. It had turned from the rue St. Honore into the rue Feronnière, a very narrow way made more so by the small shops built against the wall of the churchyard. The passage was further blocked by the approach of two carts, one laden with wine and the other with hay, and the coach was brought to a stop at the corner of the street.
Ravaillac had followed the coach from the Louvre, had seen it stop and noted that there wasnow no one near it and no one to interfere with him as he came close to the side of the carriage where the King was seated. Ravaillac had his cloak wrapped round his left arm to conceal a knife and creeping in between the shops and the coach as if he desired to pass by, paused there, and resting one foot upon a spoke of the wheel, the other upon a stone, leaned forward and stabbed the King. The knife entered a little above the heart between the third and fourth ribs. The King, who was reading a letter, fell over towards the Duc d’Épernon on his other side, murmuring, “I am wounded.” At this moment Ravaillac, fearing that the point of his weapon had been turned aside, quickly struck a second blow at the fainting monarch, who had raised his arm slightly, thus giving the knife better chance to reach his heart. This second stroke was instantly fatal. The blood gushed from his mouth and he expired breathing a deep sigh. His Majesty’s attendants, now running up, would have killed Ravaillac on the spot, but the Duc d’Épernon called out to them to secure his person, whereupon one seized the dagger, another his throat, and he was promptly handed over to the guards. The news spread that the King was dead and caused a panic. People rushed from the shops into the streets and a tumult arose which was stayed only by the prompt assurance of d’Épernon that the King had merely fainted and was being carried to the Louvre for medical attention.
The murder created intense excitement in the city, for the King was beloved and trusted by the people as the one hope of peace after such constant strife. Sully, his faithful minister, was broken-hearted but acted with great promptitude and firmness. He brought troops forthwith into Paris and strengthened the garrison with the Swiss guards. Despair and consternation prevailed in the Louvre, where were the widowed Queen, Marie de Medicis, and the infant heir, now Louis XIII. Bassompierre, in his memoirs, tells us how he found the dead King laid out in his cabinet, surrounded by afflicted followers and weeping surgeons. Summoned to the Queen’s presence, he found her in dishabille, overcome with grief, and he with others knelt to kiss her hand and assure her of his devotion. The Duc de Villeroi reasoned with her, imploring her to postpone her lamentations until she had made provision for her own and her son’s safety. While the Duc de Guise was directed to bring together all the principal people to recognise and proclaim the new sovereign, the marshal proceeded to gather up all the troops and march through the city to check any signs of tumult and sedition. Meanwhile, Sully had occupied the Bastile with a force of archers and had enjoined all good subjects to swear allegiance to the throne and proclaim their readiness to give their lives to avenge Henry’s murder.
With the nation in such a temper it was littlelikely that any mercy would be shown to Ravaillac. His trial was hurried forward in all haste and he was arraigned before the High Court of the Tournelle. Long and minute interrogatories were administered to him on the rack to extort confession of an act fully proved by eye-witnesses and of which he was duly convicted. The court declared that he was “attainted of high treason divine and human in the highest degree, for the most wicked, the most abominable parricide committed on the person of the late Henry IV, of good and laudable memory,” and he was condemned in reparation to make theamende honorablebefore the principal gate of the city of Paris, “whither he shall be carried,” so runs the decree, “and drawn on a tumbril in his shirt, bearing a lighted torch of two pounds weight, and there he shall make confession of his crime, of which he repents and begs pardon of God, the king and the laws. From thence he shall be carried to the Grève and, on a scaffold to be there erected, the flesh shall be torn from him with red-hot pincers ... and after this his limbs shall be dragged by four horses, his body burnt to ashes and dispersed in the air. His goods and chattels are also declared to be forfeited and confiscated to the king. And it is further ordained that the house in which he was born shall be pulled down to the ground (the owner thereof being previously indemnified) and that no other building shall ever hereafter be erected on the foundation thereof; thatwithin fifteen days after the publication of this present sentence his father and mother shall, by sound of trumpet and public proclamation in the city of Angoulême, be banished out of the kingdom and forbidden ever to return under the penalty of being hanged and strangled, without any further process at law. The Court has also forbidden, and doth forbid his brothers, sisters, uncles and others, from henceforth to bear the said name of Ravaillac.”
The curious fact is recorded in history that Henry IV had a strong presentiment of impending fate. “I cannot tell you why, Bassompierre, but I feel satisfied I shall never go into Germany” (on a projected campaign). He repeated several times, “I believe I shall die soon.” He shared his forebodings with Sully. “I shall die in this city. This ceremony of the Queen’s coronation (now at hand) disturbs me. I shall die in this city; I shall never quit Paris again, they mean to kill me. Accursed coronation! I shall fall during the show.” And he did die the day after it. Yet sometimes he laughed at these fears, remarking, only two days before his murder, to some of his attendants whom he overheard discussing the subject, “It is quite foolish to anticipate evil; for thirty years every astrologer and charlatan in the kingdom has predicted my death on a particular day, and here I am still alive.” But on this very morning of the 14th of May, the young Duc de Vendôme brought him a fresh horoscope. The constellation under which Henry was born threatened him with great danger on this day and he was urged to pass it in sheltered retirement. The King called the astrologer a crafty old fox and the duke a young fool, and said, “My fate is in the hands of God.” At the moment Ravaillac was in the vicinity of the palace, but his gestures were so wild that the guards drove him away to wait and carry out his fell deed elsewhere.
Ravaillac was no doubt the tool of others. The King’s life had been threatened by courtiers near his person. Not the least active of his enemies was Madame de Verneuil, born D’Entragues, who had been at one time his mistress, but who had joined his enemies, notably the Duc d’Épernon, in cordial detestation of his policy. Henry was at this time planning a great coalition against the overweening power of Spain and favored the concession of religious toleration throughout Europe. Madame de Verneuil had welcomed Ravaillac to Paris and commended him to the hospitality of one of her creatures, and it was proved that the murderer had been once in the service of the Duc d’Épernon.
When Henry IV fell under the assassin’s knife, it was found by his will that, in the event of a minority, the regency should devolve upon Marie de Medicis, his second wife. This happened because Louis XIII, the new King, was no more than nine years of age, and once again France came under female rule. The Italian Queen Mother soon fellunder the domination of two other Italians, the Concinis, husband and wife. The first, a mercenary and overbearing creature, best known as the Marquis d’Ancre, stirred up the bitterest animosity and brought the Queen into fierce conflict with the princes of the blood who rose in open rebellion. They were presently supported by the young King and a murderous plot was carried out for the marquis’ assassination. It was effected in broad daylight at the entrance of the Louvre by the Baron de Vitry, a captain of the Gardes du Corps. “I have the King’s order to arrest you,” said De Vitry. “À me?” asked the astonished d’Ancre in imperfect French. “À vous,” replied the other, taking out a pistol and shooting him down, the rest dispatching him with their swords. Louis XIII, still barely sixteen, is said to have witnessed the murder from a window of the Louvre, from which he cried, “Great thanks to all; now at last I am king.”
The Prince de Condé, as leader of the insurgent princes, had been arrested and imprisoned in the palace but removed to the Bastile. The mob, greatly incensed, attacked the Louvre, but, unable to find him, failed to compass Condé’s release who was now transferred in the dead of night, “without torches,” to Vincennes. Concini’s house was next sacked, his body dragged from the grave, carried through the streets and subjected to every indignity, his nose and ears being cut off and the corpse burned. Hatred of the Queen’s foreign favoriteswas not yet appeased. Leonora Galigai, the Marquis d’Ancre’s widow, was brought to trial, her conviction being necessary before her property and estates could be confiscated and divided. She was duly arraigned but it was impossible to prove her complicity in her husband’s misdeeds or to procure conviction of any crime involving capital punishment. The venue was therefore changed and she was accused of sorcery and witchcraft. It was said that she had attracted astrologers and magicians into France who brought with them spells and incantations, amulets, talismans, and all the apparatus of wax figures, to produce death by wasting disease. She was asked in court to confess by what magical arts she had gained her malign influence over the Queen and she replied contemptuously, “By the power that strong minds exercise over weak ones.” The case was certain to go against her, but she still hoped to escape with a sentence of banishment and it was a terrible shock when she was condemned to death for the crime oflèse majesté, human and divine. Yet she faced her fate with marvellous fortitude. Great crowds turned out to jeer at her as she was carried in a cart to the Place de Grève, but she maintained her composure until she saw the flames destined to consume her decapitated body, then quickly recovering herself, she met death without bravado and without fear. Her son was imprisoned for some time in the castle of Nantes and the Concini property was chiefly divided betweenthe King and the Pope, Clement VII. Leonora Galigai had originally been the Queen’s waiting woman for several years. Of humble birth, the daughter of a carpenter, she had gained the complete confidence of her mistress by her soft voice and insinuating ways, and on coming to France, Marie de Medicis had insisted upon Leonora’s appointment as lady in waiting, although Henry absolutely refused to appoint her until the Queen gained her point by her importunities.
By this time a new power was rising above the horizon, that of the Bishop of Luçon, afterwards, and better known as, Cardinal Richelieu. The cadet of a noble but not affluent family, he was intended for the career of arms but turned cleric in order to hold the bishopric of Luçon, the presentation of which was hereditary in his house. By his talents he soon made his mark as a churchman. He was assiduous in his religious profession and an eloquent preacher, but his powerful mind and ambitious spirit presently turned him towards a political career. He arrived at Paris in 1614 as the representative of the clergy of Poitou in the States General and his insinuating manners and personal charm soon won him wide favor at Court. He was presented to the Queen Mother, Marie de Medicis, by Barbin, the controller-general of finances, and by the Concinis, the above mentioned ill-fated Marquis d’Ancre and his wife, Leonora Galigai. He first became the Queen’s chaplain and next the secretaryof State for war, barely escaping the evil consequences of his intimacy with the Concinis. It is rumored in history that he knew of the intended assassination of d’Ancre the night before it occurred but neglected to give warning on the plea that he did not believe the story and thought the news would wait. When the King and his mother quarrelled and Marie de Medicis withdrew to Blois, Richelieu accompanied her and served her without at first compromising himself with Louis. He was at length ordered to leave her and retired to his bishopric. He was further exiled to the papal province of Avignon, but was suddenly recalled and forgiven. He still devoted himself to the Queen and was her chosen friend and adviser, services which she requited by securing him the cardinal’s hat.